Is everything OK?

Have you heard of folksinger Bob Snider? One of my favorite songs of his is Darn Folksinger. It begins with Bob saying how he was once asked "How come you never wrote any protest songs?" His response: "Since everything is OK." 


While Bob's tongue was firmly planted in cheek, there is a truth in his words. Most people just want to live their lives, and as long as everything is OK, they will let the politicians do what they want, even if they were given no mandate to do it.

Deregulate the banking industry? I don't have a lot of money in the bank anyway, so it doesn't really affect me, so OK.

Unlimited spending by political action groups during campaigns? I probably will be carpet bombed by negative political ads, but I know what's going on and those ads don't influence me, so OK.

Invade a foreign country? I'm not going to be fighting, our soldiers knew what they were signing up for, and they say those foreigners had it coming, so OK.

Mislead the public about the true cost of of some expensive program? The politicians complaining about it would probably do the same thing if they had power, so I can't do anything about it, so OK.

Cut taxes on the rich so that rich billionaires are paying a lower percentage of their earnings in taxes than their administrative assistants?  Hey, maybe I'll be rich someday, and they say those guys will use their tax savings to create jobs, so OK.

Enact a prohibition on recreational drugs (like alcohol or marijuana)?  Some people say it just drives up the prices, which causes addicts to commit petty crime to feed their addiction, and leads to powerful crime gangs who make money trafficking, but that's not in my neighbourhood, and we gotta get that crap off the streets, so OK.

Eventually, as the negative effects of bad decisions accumulate, and people notice that their lives are becoming less OK, there is a backlash. But it would be better if we had some way to not enact bad decisions in the first place. Maybe Ikanocracy?

Oh, and you may know someone who thinks all the above are great ideas. Well I think Bob would agree with me:  What an idiot he is! (and the last line of that song is particularly ironic.)

Good news, politicians aren't having fun!

I was driving in to work yesterday and was listening to the CBC. It was the political panel, a Liberal, a Conservative and a New Democrat, discussing ... and mostly spinning the current events.

It one point, when discussing some recent provincial government cutbacks, the Liberal had the following gem:

"It's not a fun time to be a politician. 
They have some tough choices to make."

I thought that was their job. Perhaps if they had made some tough choices when times were good and actually tried to balance the budget then, or even better, ran a surplus, we wouldn't be in this mess today.  This is one of the premises of Keynesian Economics.  

If politicians really were putting the good of society ahead of their own interests, prudent budgetting would be the norm. Instead, what we see is politicians who bribe voters with their own money, or worse, the money of future generations, with their main goal of perpetuating their rule or the rule of their party.

If anyone has ideas about how we can make our representatives actually represent us, we need these ideas now. If not, how about we move to a system where they are not needed. You know what system I am talking about.